Build a 3D printer

Introducing Reprap
Commercial rapid prototyping systems cost tens of thousands of pounds; Reprap’s different. It’s designed to be cheap to make, and the whole design –­ including the software –­ is open source. The intention is that anyone can put one together and start making things.

The design is fairly simple, and even the extruder can be made without having to buy too many specialist parts. Items such as the stepper motors that are used to position the head are cheap, standard pieces and everything’s controlled using standard microcontroller circuits. These are driven by open-source software based on a system called Arduino, a cross-platform toolset for linking your computer to the outside world.

The software on the PC drives Reprap, based on the design of an object which can be created in standard 3D design tools, and saved in a format called STL, which is used by many prototyping systems.

There’s already a small and growing library of objects that you can download from the website; the project team hopes that in time more will be added, allowing people to create whatever they want, simply by downloading the object description and feeding the appropriate polymer into a Reprap machine.

If the idea is appealing, but the thought of building a machine from scratch is daunting, don’t worry –­ companies like Bits From Bytes and the Reprap Foundation offer all the mechanical and electronic parts, so all you have to do is put them together.

All the software for Reprap is downloadable from the site, as well as comprehensive instructions. According to Reprap’s Adrian Bowyer, over 1,100 electronics kits have been sold, so there’s already a fairly large community of users.

Building a printer
Building your own 3D printer might seem odd, in these days where we often buy new equipment rather than having old stuff repaired. But it’s probably not beyond the skills of most people who have built their own PC, and certainly not those who built their own computer in pre-IBM PC days.

While Reprap is probably the most well known of the small prototyping systems, it’s not the only one. The Tommelise project is based on Reprap, but designed to be simpler and made out of wood, with just a few hand tools necessary to build it. The creators reckon it can be made for about $150 (£104).